LEE’S SU­PER SUBS MAKE CITY SLICKER

LEE John­son’s in­spired sub­sti­tu­tions gave him con­fi­dence that Bris­tol City can go all the way in the bat­tle for Cham­pi­onship play­off places.

The head coach made a triple change just after the hour mark and, within five min­utes, two of his re­place­ments – Matty Tay­lor and debu­tant Kasey Palmer – had net­ted the goals that turned the game on its head.

Bolton had taken a 58thminute lead through Will Buck­ley’s header against the run of play, but City stormed back to stretch their un­beaten run to 10 games and move to within two points of the top six.

A de­lighted John­son said: “This time last year we were re­ly­ing on the same play­ers with tired legs and couldn’t main­tain the form of the first half of the sea­son.

“Now the strength of our bench is an in­di­ca­tion that we are much bet­ter pre­pared to deal with our re­main­ing games.

“You can make changes, but it is down to the at­ti­tude of the sub­sti­tutes and how well they have warmed up if they are to make an im­pact.

“Matty Tay­lor has made a dif­fer­ence for us be­fore and looked re­ally sharp. Kasey Palmer has only just joined us, but al­ready our fans are chant­ing his name, which is great.

“We dom­i­nated the game from start to fin­ish and it was just a case of fin­ish­ing off our chances.

“I am very happy with where we are as a squad, but we know what a tough league the Cham­pi­onship is and we can’t take our foot off the pedal.

“Some of the foot­ball we played to­day was out­stand­ing.”

Bolton led when a mis­take by Lloyd Kelly al­lowed Sammy Ameobi to drive in a cross from the right that was headed home by Buck­ley.

But Tay­lor looked in­spired from the mo­ment he took the pitch, quickly equal­is­ing with a low drive that beat Ben Al­nwick at his near post.

Two min­utes later the striker latched on to a down­ward header from Adam Web­ster at a cor­ner and volleyed the ball across goal for Palmer, whose header just crossed the line be­fore be­ing cleared.

Bolton boss Phil Parkin­son had no com­plaints about the out­come. “We had to ride our luck at times against a very good side,” he said.

“What dis­ap­pointed me was that we con­ceded two soft goals. Ben Al­nwick has been bril­liant for us and I think the shot for their first goal went through a de­fender’s legs, which may have left him un­sighted.

“The sec­ond goal came from a cor­ner and was not the sort I would ex­pect us to con­cede against Bris­tol City.

“We have plenty of phys­i­cal pres­ence, yet we twice al­lowed them to get im­por­tant touches from a cor­ner.

“I have no prob­lem with the ap­pli­ca­tion of my play­ers. But we will need to de­fend bet­ter than that if we are to climb the ta­ble. They are on a good run and it was al­ways go­ing to be a tough game. But, hav­ing edged in front, we should have taken some­thing. We grew into the first half and, al­though we started the sec­ond slowly, we would have been okay had we done bet­ter in the two sit­u­a­tions we failed to de­fend.”

Bolton ap­plied late pres­sure in a bid to res­cue a point, but it was too lit­tle, too late.